Conectiva Linux 4.0

Over 500 million people speak Spanish or Portuguese as a first language. Conectiva brings Linux to them.

What Exactly is Conectiva Linux?

Conectiva Linux is a company that concentrates on translating
Linux into Portuguese and Spanish. Its distribution, as one might
infer, is called Conectiva Linux. Translation is the primary
concern, so rather than creating the universe and assembling a
distribution from scratch, Conectiva based its wares on Red Hat and
worked from there. It's a reasonable decision, and Conectiva went
its own way right from the start—it's definitely not a hacked Red
Hat. While the typical hacker might have preferred a Debian base,
that's all in the past and Conectiva is what it is now. Conectiva
offers a standard edition and a server edition in either Portuguese
or Spanish, although many packages bundle various oddities such as
mouse pads, pins, pens, shirts, stickers, books and the like.
Honestly, I don't understand why distributors like to have so many
different packages, one package with different installation options
might be easier. Still, since Conectiva sees fit to divide Linux
between server and standard, let's have a look at what each edition
includes.

The standard edition is what you'd expect from a Linux
distribution, translated into Portuguese and Spanish. A normal
installation proceeds via the Red Hat installer, and even though
during one install I got a couple of warning messages about RPMs,
everything went along just fine, and on reboot, up popped the K
display manager (KDM).

Conectiva chose KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker, MWM, FVWM and Icewm.
Of these, FVWM, MWM and Icewm are about half translated, but the
system has also been translated, so one isn't relying on the GUI
for translation. These aren't just “alternatives” to KDE for
those who won't conform. Every window manager actually works. KDE
for all its perks does not look nearly sinister enough, and it's
important to appreciate the variety of excellent window managers
out there. Conectiva advertisements usually show funky WindowMaker
or Enlightenment screenshots, and if one has an artistic flair, one
might as well express it in all areas of life, including
Linux.

Conectiva left off an entry GNOME/Enlightenment on the K
display manager (accidentally, I presume). Therefore, if you want
your life to look like a scene from The Matrix, you'll have to add
an entry to KDM or start up GNOME by way of telinit 3;
gnome & as root (oh no, not the GNOME warning
message!). There is a general feeling that GNOME is the future (or
at least has a very big future), especially considering Helix GNOME
and even the Eazle project, so it would be nice if
GNOME/Enlightenment were more highly featured. I look forward to
the GNOME/Sawmill pairing, which I hope everyone including
Conectiva picks up on, since it runs quite efficiently on minimal
hardware. At the very least, GNOME's icons are outstanding.

Eu soy um Servidor

The server edition is a bigger installation in Portuguese and
Spanish. “What's a distribution—a collection of software I can
download for free on the Internet?” Caldera's Ransom Love once
asked, and honestly, it's worth asking. Basically, that's exactly
what a distribution is, with an installer, files placed into
various directories and a bunch of configuration files all filled
out. The server edition is packed with software that you can
download over the Net, but it's probably most convenient for people
who might not have high-bandwith connections. The documentation
will walk you through complete networking server setup,
configuration and administration.

Currently, the server distribution's number-one advantage
comes in the form of four large manuals: Lars Wirzenius'
Linux System Administrator's Guide, Olaf
Kirch's Linux Network Administrators Guide,
and Conectiva's Linux Server Guide and
System Installation Guide. Altogether, 1708
pages of documentation, and I must say, quite a good collection of
work. These manuals cover everything server-related, they're
thorough, and that's probably why they're included in the
Edi<\#231><\#227>o Servidor. They're not condescending,
and would be nice for computer-proficient Linux newbies, but even
complete neophytes should find these books make for rapid learning
and valuable reference. Most normal users would probably choose the
standard edition of Conectiva, so they'll miss out on these
excellent texts unless Conectiva decides to include them next time
around.

The Meaning of it, Mostly

The point of Conectiva is not that it's the be-all, end-all,
fastest, best-configured Linux with all the software squeezed
magically on a 1.44MB floppy, a sentient living HAL 2000 that will
make tea and beat you at chess. The point of Conectiva is that it
makes Linux more accessible for hundreds of millions of potential
users, and it works just fine. I've been coding on it, networking,
configuring and customizing, and everything else your typical user
does, for several weeks now and everything works. RPM
installations, tgz installations, everything works fine without a
single glitch. The libraries are current and in the right places,
ldconfig knows where to find
everything, and only a couple of libraries needed to be updated
specifically for what I was doing-->plug-and-program, an
improvement on plug-and-play. Setting up networking meant editing
the same files as on Red Hat or most anywhere else, and there is a
supply of the standard commercial applications, such as Netscape
and StarOffice. Conectiva is very easy to use, and I just cannot
find anything particularly wrong with it. If Linux is going to be
championed into new territories, it should be presented as well as
possible. Conectiva in many ways does this better than many
stateside distributors, from flashy ads and cool T-shirts to giving
users a choice of many well-configured desktops, with easy
installation and configuration, excellent manuals, support, and an
enthusiastic focal point for the Portuguese and Spanish speaking
Linux scene.

There are a couple of bugs to be ironed out, for example the
occasional warnings during installation, the absence of GNOME from
the KDM, the weird entries on the KDM login
(gdm,
postgress and
xfs), and root's mailbox getting
flooded with Radius error messages. SVGAlib needs to be updated,
SDL is missing, and if you program, you'll want to get the newest
versions of your favorite libraries. Since 4.0 came out a while
back there is now much to update for the next release. However,
with so much translation work already done, Conectiva will be more
able to concentrate on polishing and maintaining the
software.

There was a time when distributions had such different
libraries and files in different places that certain software would
work on some distributions but not on others. These days, we don't
really have that problem. Distributions are kind of a fetish; we
like the name Red Hat if we like Heinz ketchup, and if we
instinctively avoid brand names we instinctively avoid Red Hat, but
it doesn't matter half as much as it once did. Sure, there are
different config files, but you can change those without suffering.
And maybe some libraries are old and need to be replaced, but
that's part of running Linux; you're always out of date (and
perhaps without one).

The other part of running Linux is that it always works,
whatever name is on the box. I suppose, then, that this isn't a
review as much as an announcement of good news. Well, thank you to
Conectiva and everyone who has helped in the translation process
for making that possible.